Last year, I wrote a blog with this title. I was shocked to find the 2009 Budget Implementation Bill was being used to gut the Navigable Water Protection Act (NWPA). The NWPA had been cornerstone environmental legislation since 1867, but the Conservative government decided that an objective definition of “navigable” could be replaced with “anything the Minister of Transport thinks it is.”
Despite a valiant fight by a handful of senators (former Progressive Conservatives for the most part), the 2009 Budget Implementation Bill was passed… doing damage to the environment in the guise of a budgetary measure.
This year is worse. The Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA) is clearly in the Harper governments cross-hairs. First, the budget text (as reported) included the unprecedented move to take energy projects away from the CEAA and assign environmental assessment for energy projects to the National Energy Board or the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. Now, the details of the 2010 Budget Implementation Bill have been released, and, you guessed it, it gets worse.
The new amendments were clearly designed to evade the implications of the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision on the Red Chris Mine. The Red Chris mine is a gold and copper mine in BC. In January the SCC found that the Environment Minister had failed in legal obligations under CEAA by describing the details of the project that require review (called “scoping”) in such a way that damaging aspects would be excluded from environmental assessment. The 2010 Budget Implementation Bill means the minister can scope the project any old way he or she chooses. Big huge mine? Tiny little assessment.
This is a body blow to environmental assessment. The new bill also removes the requirement for public consultation on projects subject to Comprehensive Study. Comprehensive Study only applies to fairly large projects with real potential for environmental damage. This actually runs directly counter to the purposes of the Act. It also removes projects funded through infrastructure money flowing to municipalities or First Nation.
The additional irony is that CEAA comes up for a mandatory statutory review in May. The Agency and Parliamentarians were gearing up for hearings in the House of Commons.
So adding insult to environmental injury, this latest gutting of environmental legislation demonstrates the Conservative government’s contempt for Parliament.
By sticking this regressive set of amendments in the Budget Implementation Bill, the government is counting on Opposition Parties holding their noses and passing it. I wish they would stop holding their noses and open their mouths…. It is time to speak up to protect the few environmental laws we have (had) in Canada.